Not sure if this goes here or off-topic but decided to post it here anyway.

Warning: Spoilers inside!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush signed into law on Monday a controversial bill that would stiffen penalties for movie and music piracy at the federal level.

The law creates an intellectual property czar who will report directly to the president on how to better protect copyrights both domestically and internationally. The Justice Department had argued that the creation of this position would undermine its authority.

The law also toughens criminal laws against piracy and counterfeiting, although critics have argued that the measure goes too far and risks punishing people who have not infringed.

The Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America backed the bill, as did the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"By becoming law, the PRO-IP Act sends the message to IP criminals everywhere that the U.S. will go the extra mile to protect American innovation," said Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Counterfeiting and piracy costs the United States nearly $250 billion annually, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Rick Cotton, general counsel for NBC Universal, said the bill would give movie and music makers more tools to fight what he called a "tidal wave" of counterfeiting and piracy of everything from medical devices to automobile parts to media by organized crime.

"That is at the core of what this discussion is about," he said. "It is not about teenagers."

Cotton said he did not expect an IP czar to be named before Bush's term ended in January.

Richard Esguerra, spokesman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he was relieved to see lawmakers had stripped out a measure to have the Justice Department file civil lawsuits against pirates, which would have made the attorneys "pro bono personal lawyers for the content industry."

But the advocacy group Public Knowledge had argued that the law went too far, especially given that fair use of copyrighted material was already shrinking.

Public Knowledge particularly opposed a measure that allowed for the forfeiture of devices used in piracy.

"Let's suppose that there's one computer in the house, and one person uses it for downloads and one for homework. The whole computer goes," said Public Knowledge spokesman Art Brodsky.

Brodsky argued that, at best, the bill was unnecessary because the recording and movie industry had the right to take accused infringers to court.

"There's already lots and lots of penalties for copyright violations," he said. "They've got all the tools they need."

"before it was considered to be downloading a 'work' to download an entire CD. Now, each individual track would be considered a 'work,' so one CD is now ten or more times the penalty that it once was. Similarly, if you copied a magazine with 100 photographs in it, you would now be liable for each copywritten photograph and article separately. It's this clause that actually presents a potential problem for the producers of mixed media works, like games. It will be up to the courts to draw the appropriate lines, but based on this new definition of 'works,' a game with a licensed soundtrack may be multiple works, and older games of this nature likely haven't contractually dealt with this idea in a way to account for the PRO-IP Act. For example, let's say someone is pirating Madden 2002. It might not be worth EA's time or trouble to go after those pirates, since their real concern at this point is Madden 2009, but the piracy of that game could now also potentially be considered the piracy of that music. It's unclear whether the musicians would be able to pursue this separately or whether they would have to work with EA as the owner of the overall 'work.' Assuming the action has to be brought by EA on their behalf based on the license, it's possible EA could be sued for failing to do so. By expanding the definition of a 'work,' a quagmire has been created that will impact many producers, at least until the court irons out the default rignts in these cases."

How is this a bad decision? If you had spent years work on a game/album/ya mum/whatever and some mofo come's and steals it. You would be pissed off. Except this is with million's of mofo's around the world. You people forget that piracy is wrong. It may not affect the businesses/companies that much but its still doing a little damage. You are stealing and they are gonna punish you. When has that ever not been a rule in societies through out the world? Crime's get punished get over it move on. But i guess my view is bias as i pirate the majority of stuff i own so...=/

How is this a bad decision? If you had spent years work on a game/album/ya mum/whatever and some mofo come's and steals it. You would be pissed off. Except this is with million's of mofo's around the world. You people forget that piracy is wrong. It may not affect the businesses/companies that much but its still doing a little damage. You are stealing and they are gonna punish you. When has that ever not been a rule in societies through out the world? Crime's get punished get over it move on. But i guess my view is bias as i pirate the majority of stuff i own so...=/

What did you think caused the economic crisis!

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Are you joking or what? It's hard to tell from your post. I'm not pro-piracy, but this is the stupidest post I've seen on the subject and I can't tell if that's on purpose or not (if it is, it's hard to get parody over the internets).

The economic crisis was caused by lending to people who couldn't pay back the loans, making some banks and lending institutions seem like they had more money than they did and making other banks unwilling to lend now.

Second, this isn't stealing. Stealing deprives the original owner of a copy. This does not.

Thirdly, no society in history locked IP down like this. People were relatively free to copy works - someone stole the characters from Don Quixote after its publication and wrote an unauthorized sequel. Miguel de Cervantes dealt with that in the real sequel to Don Quixote by having the protagonist meet this unauthorized copy. Copying PROMOTES innovation, through out human history.

Even copyright 50 years ago was saner - there should be protection for authors, but for hundreds of years after their death? Nothing post-Mickey Mouse is ever going to be public domain and that is a huge loss for human society.

How is this a bad decision? If you had spent years work on a game/album/ya mum/whatever and some mofo come's and steals it. You would be pissed off. Except this is with million's of mofo's around the world. You people forget that piracy is wrong. It may not affect the businesses/companies that much but its still doing a little damage. You are stealing and they are gonna punish you. When has that ever not been a rule in societies through out the world? Crime's get punished get over it move on. But i guess my view is bias as i pirate the majority of stuff i own so...=/

What did you think caused the economic crisis!

Click to expand...

Are you joking or what? It's hard to tell from your post. I'm not pro-piracy, but this is the stupidest post I've seen on the subject and I can't tell if that's on purpose or not (if it is, it's hard to get parody over the internets).

The economic crisis was caused by lending to people who couldn't pay back the loans, making some banks and lending institutions seem like they had more money than they did and making other banks unwilling to lend now.

Second, this isn't stealing. Stealing deprives the original owner of a copy. This does not.

Thirdly, no society in history locked IP down like this. People were relatively free to copy works - someone stole the characters from Don Quixote after its publication and wrote an unauthorized sequel. Miguel de Cervantes dealt with that in the real sequel to Don Quixote by having the protagonist meet this unauthorized copy. Copying PROMOTES innovation, through out human history.

Even copyright 50 years ago was saner - there should be protection for authors, but for hundreds of years after their death? Nothing post-Mickey Mouse is ever going to be public domain and that is a huge loss for human society.

Click to expand...

Great post man (or woman)! There is some solid rational argument here. You have reinstilled my hopes for humanity (for the remained of the evening at least), something which very rarely happens when I surf the net!